Luther Blissett » Fri Jan 22, 2016 1:53 pm wrote:I've actually used your original February 20, 2014 post as a guide of sorts from time to time since it offered a rare strategic clarity.
Let me try to elaborate on what I mean in the tumblr example. I was fairly well-acquainted with the low-grade, insular, "bottom-of-the-barrel aesthetics" (hasty memes, bad typography, process blue, system fonts, racist aunt stuff) neonazi accounts for which their audience only seemed to be one another.
The group that I recently stumbled into was surprising because there were some connections with activists I know pretty well (and who I am still giving the benefit of the doubt - for all I know they're constantly confronting them, or somehow missed the clues) and because, for lack of a better term, the aesthetics of the accounts were okay, not the normal routes of white supremacist crossover. I'm honestly a notorious snob when it comes to art, and subtracting all the nazi stuff, I would probably actually like the exhibition so to speak. That's why it was surprising, I just hadn't had neonazis sneak up on me like that in quite awhile.
Many thanks for the thumbs-up, I had thought that what I'd written had been pretty much ignored and lost.
I'd like to stress that my accounts there are pretty much concerning a particular environment and time and may be of limited use outside of that. You do describe something that was also unique about the BDF, where fascists and non-fascists (plus plenty of in-betweeners) manage to co-exist somehow in a functioning environment. It's places like this where you are more likely to see informative dialogue now and again, places like Strormfront and 'anti' sites tend to be quite predictable.
It may be that these 'activists' you speak of are doing a similar thing to what I did, ie, going native, laying low, having a light touch and simply waiting for opportunities for 'constructive confrontation', which don't come around very often. Running around waving the anti-fascist flag doesn't get you anywhere.
Because these opportunities can be rare, a casual viewing can suggest fairly a homogenous community, but if you go deeper you might see a different story. I suggest you settle in and give it some time, sometimes a nudge is needed to get things going, but like I said
a light touch.
It seems you know some of those activists. I kept pretty anonymous on BDF, mainly because we're a pretty small island and it wouldn't have taken much for me to be tracked down, as it was I received one death threat and several of violence.
" Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism"